Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Food Expert: 7 PROVEN Ways To Nurture Your Body

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Dr Sarah Berry is one of the UK's leading experts in nutrition, a researcher at King's College London, and the Chief Scientist at ZOE.We'll explore the truth behind glucose spikes, what you need to know about seed oils, and how to navigate misinformation about nutrition on social media.What you’ll learn:🥜 2 foods that stop you from overeating👝 The perfect recipe to avoid ordering Deliveroo🥯 Quick hacks for when you have no time🥦 Simple tricks to eat more fibre⭐ The truth about seed oil and inflammation🫐 Why polyphenols are more powerful than proteinBut first, please don’t forget to subscribe and share, it really helps us to grow this podcast.Resources & links mentioned:@drsarahberryLinks to subscribe / follow:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRoCan I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==🛑 Disclaimers & legal:This podcast is for educational / informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. All opinions are those of the speaker(s).

Seed oils are toxic. Seedoles are responsible for all modern ailments from cardiovascular disease to cancer to Alzheimer's. It's all because we're consuming seed oils. The evidence doesn't support that at all. Professor Sarah Berry is one of the UK's leading experts in nutrition, a researcher at King's College London and the chief scientist at Zoe. But today she is going to be on the podcast talking about the truth behind glucose spikes. What you actually need to know about seed oils and navigating misinformation when, it comes to nutrition on social media. There are some good nutritionists and some good dietitians putting out good information, but loudest voices, unfortunately, a lot of it's neutralbolic.

My most confident years and my happiest years in myself have been in my 40s, because I don't give a shit if someone thinks I said something stupid. We live in this time of protein obsession. There is on social media a lot of misinformation. Trend that I think we're going to see emerging, which is not neutralbolic. is a f***. Before we get into the conversation with Professor Sarah, please, if you could just subscribe or leave a five-star review, it really, really helps us. Continue the podcast and bringing you guests that can help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Hello, my name is

Professor Sarah Berry and welcome to her discussions podcast. Professor Sarah, our community have sent in so many questions about glucose spikes, nutrition, how to have a nutritious diet. when you're a really, really busy woman, and I cannot wait to get into all of those. But first, I would love to just hear what brought you into the world of nutrition? And why is it something that's so important to you? I think it's because I love research. So it's not necessarily nutrition per se, although nutrition is very exciting. It's something that's relevant to everyone.

What does everyone in the world do we eat? Yes, it's highly relevant. But it's the science. It's the research process. I'm a research active scientist. I love running clinical trials. The excitement I get from thinking of a research question, developing a study design, a protocol,

to how I'm going to test it, to then even the boring stuff like getting ethics approval for running a trial, recruiting participants because I mainly do human clinical trials, thinking about the intervention, what is that I'm going to test, what are the outcomes I'm going to look at, then the real exciting bit,

getting the data at the end, analysing the data, and seeing have, I answered my research question, you know, is that fat better than that fat for you? Does this supplement work and so forth? And it's that whole process that is so exciting. And I've run now 35 randomised control trials. It never ever bores me. Now, obviously nutrition itself is also really exciting. And we know so little still, I think, about nutrition. We know enough, I think, to make very healthy choices. But I think it's also a really exciting area to be in because we're learning so much.

and it's such a rapidly evolving area of not just science, but actually what's out there. You know, when I started out in my nutrition career, which was, gosh, more than 25 years ago, nearly 30 years ago, the food landscape was totally different even since I started my career. So it's something that's never going to get old. Incredible answer. Being at the forefront of all these really interesting discussions, you know, literally doing the experiments. But I'd imagine nutrition, studying nutrition and research, nutrition poses its own, well, lots of difficulties.

I'd imagine it's very, very difficult to create controlled environments when it comes to nutrition. How do you mitigate all those different confounding factors when you're doing your research? I love that question because it means I get to talk about the whole research process. And it's a great question because running clinical trials is beset with challenges. I think there is no perfect nutrition clinical trial. There's a perfect pharmacological trial because you can give a tablet and you can give a placebo. But how do you blind, how do you mask one dietary intervention from another dietary intervention,

except in the case of supplements? It's really, really challenging. You know, how do you account for other factors that are really important in nutrition studies, such as what is it you're displacing by what you're adding in? So if I want to look, for example, the health effects of nuts, which is what I've studied a lot,

I can't just say to you, okay, here, go and have, you know, two portions of nuts that's like 200 extra calories. Something else is going to change because you'll naturally therefore displace something else from your diet. And so it's all of these kind of factors. That's just a couple of examples.

Are the kind of things that we have to think about, you know, really hard when we're designing these studies. Who do we want to test those nuts in? You know, do we want to look in perimenopausal women, premenopausal? Do we want to look at males? Do we want to look at females? What age group, etc.? There's so many considerations.

And at the end of the day, one of the biggest challenges is money. And, you know, getting research funding itself is really, really difficult. We have to be really competitive with how much we charge. So when we're applying for research funding from research councils and research bodies, we have to be very competitive in how we cost our trials. And so often that also really limits what we can do. And this is why as well, so many of the studies that I've run in the past have been in just men, because in order to be competitive from a cost point of view,

if I was to recruit males and females, I would have to charge more than double probably to run a study. And the reason is because if I'm looking at how a food or a nutrient or a dietary intervention impacts a female, I have to consider are they peri or postmenopausal? I have to consider what stage of the menstrual cycle they're on and so forth. So I'd have to recruit a lot more women into that child than I would if I was just to study men.

And this is why historically, as well as other reasons, women have been quite traditionally understudied in science and particularly in nutrition. Fortunately, it's changing. And all the research that we're doing at Zoe, actually we're almost over-indexing on women, which is great. That's really brilliant to hear. I will come on to some of the practical take-home tips

that viewers can actually implement into their own lives. Scratch you my own curiosity, what is your favourite piece of research that you've ever worked on? Oh my gosh, that's really. hard, that's like saying who's my favourite child. When you run a study at the time that you're running it, it's obviously your favourite because you're living and breathing it. I would say the work that I've done around the food matrix is probably the favourite research area. In particular, a study that I did looking at the

food matrix and food matrix literally means food structure. And it's really relevant to today where all of the heavily processed foods that we consume typically have their food structure destroyed. So when we talk about ultra-processed food or food processing, I think automatically what comes to people's minds is additives, emulsifiers and all these scary like e-numbers. But actually what processing does is it changes the structure of food. And many years ago, I was looking at this in my research at Kings, where I was feeding people, for example, whole almonds. So whole almond nuts and then feeding them on other occasions ground off. almond nuts. So you destroyed the structure, you'd broken up all the cell walls. And in terms of the ingredients, you had two foods with identical ingredients. In terms of the nutrients, you've got two foods

with identical nutrients. All you've changed is the structure of the food. But how you metabolize that, how many calories you absorb and where you absorb them is totally different. So this research, for example, shows that by actually breaking down the almonds, so you're, you know, destroying that structure, you absorb all of the calories. Yet if you consume the almonds in the original form within its original food matrix, about 30% of the calories are excreted because of that structural element of the cell walls within the almonds. We also see a huge difference in the post-prancial metabolic response. So the metabolic response that occurs in the kind of eight hours after you consume the almonds. And we see differences in where you're absorbing the

nutrients in your hunger, feedback signals, in your fullness signals and so forth. And it's just by changing the structure. And so I'd say that's probably my favourite study because it's like, wow, you know, I don't think people think about that that, you know, we're so obsessed with backup pack labelling and oh, how much saturated fat and how much fibre. What does the food look like? Does that have the same structure? So the ground almonds and the normal almonds, on a, say, a food packet label, they would have the same calories. Yep. So, so that's Exactly the same calories. And we've done similar studies, for example, with porridge where we fed large porridge. So think of kind of big porridge flakes. And then we've taken them and literally just ground them, put them in a blender, fed those to individuals and then looked at their post-pranjals, their post-meal blood sugar response. So looking at the levels of circulating glucose in their blood, which we call post-prangyl glycemia. And what we see is if you have the whole large porridge, you get a really balanced blood sugar response.

If you grind it, you get a big peak, you get this dip, you get differences in fullness and satiret, you get differences in where it's absorbed. The larger porridge is absorbed, lower down the gastrointestinal tract where you have more fullness receptors, gLP, everyone's talking about them, you have more gLP released and so forth. Yet, if I was to put them into packaged food, identical ingredients, their porridge,

identical nutrients, identical fiber, identical carbohydrate. Yet just because of it, we've ground them, we totally change how our body handles them. I'm extremely excited to talk to you about glucose spike. The minefield that seems to be ultra-processed food as well. I think there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to ultra-processed foods, but then a lot of really real fears that people have. I'm very excited to come on to those.

But first, we've got a section called buy or bye-bye, where basically, I would say it's quite fair. I'm going to show you some products. And I would like to know whether you would buy these products or you would say bye-bye to them. Proceed supplements. Bye-bye. why would you say bye-bye?

Because we live in this time of protein obsession. We're all getting enough protein. We're getting more protein most of us than we need. There's very few people and only in some very unique circumstances. Maybe people who are living with cancer or some particularly elderly people who don't consume enough food generally. Everyone else, we're getting enough protein. Why do we need supplements? We can get all the protein we need from the food that we have without even a protein.

over-focusing on whether that food is high in protein or not. So waste of time, waste of money, not needed. Or if you're like some Olympic bodybuilder, maybe then. Fabulous. Bye-bye. Oh, beeswell supplements. Bye-bye for the majority of people, but buy if you are vegan or vegetarian. Am I allowed to give both? Yes, you absolutely are.

I'm a big advocate for caveat in nuance because I don't think we have enough of it. Artificial sweeteners, big topic of conversation. I'm going to have to say bye-bye. Can I give some context? Absolutely. I'm saying bye-bye because I think there's some good emerging evidence now showing how they disrupt the gut microbiome. They increase our risk of insulin resistance, might predispose to diabetes.

They also create this desire for sweet stuff because typically they tend to be even sweeter than sugar. So because of that, I would say bye-bye. However, I think that the harms of having full sugar drinks and full sugar foods are actually also very bad for us. So I would say it with some caution that I wouldn't swap, for example, a Diet Coke for a full sugar Coke. I would try and avoid both of them. But I think that also we need to be aware that not all sweetness are equally bad for our health. And again, this is quite an emerging area of research. There's some sweeteners that come from natural plant products like steviol,

that there doesn't seem to be yet any evidence to show that they're harmful for our health. In a year's time, there might, who knows. And then there's other sweeteners where there is some evidence like sucralose, ACEK, spartame, where there is some evidence they might disrupt the gut microbiome. So it does also depend on the type of sweetness, but also the context in which you're having the sweeteners. Brilliant. Processed foods.

Buy as well as by bye. Buy because not all processed foods are bad for us. The whole term ultra-processed food is so much more nuanced. And, you know, eat cheese essentially is a type of processed food. It's gone through processing. And I think we've got to stop demonising anything just because it's got the word process. seed oils. So many people demonise seedles because they say, oh, it's gone through processing, yet butter's natural. Well, absolutely not. The evidence clearly shows. Seedalls are way better

for us than butter is, but it's this kind of obsession with if it's natural, it's healthy. Lard is natural, but I'm sure I hope every listener agrees. Lard is so bad for us. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's better for us, just because it's processed doesn't mean it's bad for us. Yes, there are some foods that are processed in such a way that the structure is destroyed. It's got loads of additives and amosophiles that might not be good for us. Then I would say bye-bye. But we also have to remember that many processed foods are a lot cheaper than their unprocessed counterparts. So on average, we know that unprocessed counterparts of processed foods tend to be 50% more expensive.

So we do need to think about affordability and accessibility. And many foods are processed to make them shelf stable, safe, etc. Start your day with Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal. the instant oatmeal ready to help you tackle whatever your day brings, like wrangling your toddler into their car seat. That was fun. Coaching your sixth graders soccer team. Little girls!

And carrying all the groceries in one trip. Try Quaker protein, instant oatmeal, granola, and bars. Great taste and a good source of protein. Quaker, bring out the good. So, red meats. From a health perspective, I would say bye-bye. From a pleasure perspective, I would acknowledge that I like red meat. I am careful with how much red meat I have.

It is linked to cardiovascular disease. It is linked to increased cancers, particularly colorectal cancer. So I would caution anyone about consuming it in excess. But once in a while, buy, but in bulk, do not bye-bye. Brilliant. low-carb diets. Bye. No, bye-bye.

I'm getting confused now whether it's bye-bye-bye to low-carb diets. Generally, because I don't think we should follow any prescriptive dietary pattern, I think that healthy eating principles are quite simplistic. It's not rocket science. I think we should just have a balanced diet with balanced nutrients, with a mix of different foods. I think following, you know, a high-carb or a low-carb diet, I think it's not necessary for most people. I would caveat, however, for people who have type

two diabetes or insulin resistance, there is quite good evidence to show that low carb diets do significantly improve some of their health outcomes. But it depends, again, it's that whole, what are you, by reducing your carb intake, what are you adding in when you take the carb out? And it's really important you're adding in like hot, healthy oils, healthy protein sources, plenty of fibre. My worry with low carb, low carb, diets is that many people will not get enough fiber on a low carb diet. Brilliant. Really nice to have such a nuanced take. I think often on social media, we lack a lot of nuance and there's certainly a lot of nutrition information that we see on social media. Not all of it great. There's been a huge boom in

awareness amongst glucose spikes. Yep. What are the basics of glucose spikes and what are the take-home messages that you want people to know when they're navigating this world of where glucose spikes come up on social media quite a lot. Okay, so I think the first thing I would say is don't be scared of carbohydrates, don't be scared of glucose spikes. Remember, our bodies are clever. Our bodies have evolved to be able to handle carbohydrates. However, what we haven't evolved to be able to do

is handle many of the types of carbohydrates that we're consuming. But that changes in circulating blood glucose are normal physiological responses to eating carbohydrates. So that's the first thing I'd say is, you know, don't be scared. Just to give everyone a quick lesson, why do we get these increases in circulating blood glucose? Why do we get these spikes, as people call them? When you eat carbohydrates, carbohydrate is a nutrient. You have, you know, the main nutrients you've got is protein, fat, carbohydrate fiber.

When you consume a carbohydrate rich meal or a mixed meal, nearly every meal will have some sort of carbohydrate, unless you're literally just glugging olive oil. What happens is when we consume a meal containing carbohydrates, it's broken down in our bloodstream. Many carbohydrates, so starchy carbohydrate sugar is broken down into its constituent smaller sugars, typically glucose. And what happens is you have an increase in blood glucose after you've consumed that carbohydrate.

That typically peaks about 15 to 30 minutes after eating that carbohydrate, returns to baseline anywhere between like one hour to two hours. after. So normal physiological response, our bodies are well able to handle it. We release hormones such as insulin, when we eat carbohydrates, that then removes the carbohydrates from the circulation, puts it where it needs to go, whether it's in the muscle, whether it's back to the liver, etc. Now, what we do know, however, is that the food that we're typically consuming now is of what we call refined carbohydrates, white rice, white pasta, white potatoes. And if we consume these

on their own. So without protein, fat, fibre, you can have very big increases in circulating blood glucose. So it can reach quite high levels. And then what you can have also is what we call a blood sugar crash about two to four hours after having that carbohydrate meal. Again, there's nothing to worry about having those. But what we know is if it's repeated and excessive day in, day out, it can affect how you feel in the here and now, but it can also impact your long-term health. But there is on social media. and this is how you started the question, a lot of misinformation.

And there are influencers who talk about flatlining your glucose. You do not need to flatline your glucose. We can handle some changes. We don't want to be on a roller coaster. Absolutely, we don't. But it's fine to have some increases, peaks and dips in our glucose. I think where it comes problematic is when it's impacting how you feel. And after a while, you actually become normalized to this.

and sometimes really stepping away from refined carbohydrates and then reintroducing them into your diet allows you to see how it does impact you in the here and now. So what we know from our own research is what's particularly problematic is when you have this dip in circulating blood glucose. And so we see that if people are having refined carbohydrates and carbohydrates again on their own, so not having a mixed balance meal,

many people will get a dip in circulating glucose in that two to four hours after consuming that meal. And what we know is if you do have a dip, you tend to consume more food over the day because it triggers greater hunger. You tend to consume your next meal 30 minutes earlier. On average, people who have a dip consume 320 calories more over a day compared to people who don't have a dip. Because you're in this kind of hypoglycemic dip. Now, not to the extent that would be worrisome from a pathological point of view, as in if someone has diabetes, but you're experiencing this low sugar, that people experience it differently.

You know, I get hungry. I get brain fog. I get a little bit shaky. And so like the hunger signals in my brain are like, Sarah, get food, get food, get food. You need a quick fix. So then I go and have more refined carbohydrates. So then I'm like this throughout the day. And we've done studies where we've taken people and on one day we've given them breakfast

that causes them to have a dip. The next day we've given them a breakfast where we've got them to add like nut butter to their bagel or cheese, for example. And what we find is that on the day that they add some protein or fat to their meal, which prevents them from having a dip, they report better mood, better energy, better alertness, and actually go on to consume far less calories over that day because they're having a smoother response.

Now, that doesn't mean we need to be scared of that peak and that dip. It just means balance out your meals. Listen to how your body is feeling. Do you feel you get that crash? And if you do, be cautious having carbohydrates on their own. That really resonates with me, I think, back when I would be maybe doing a shift and I'd wake up, maybe be on call or whatever. And I'd wake up late, not have my breakfast, then get to the hospital and just be work, work, work, work, not be able to get a snack until like two. And then two would hit.

I'd be hungry. I'd just be like, I need calories right now as quick as possible. Go to the hospital canteen. And I'd have my little chocolate picnic. the picnic chocolate bars. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember those. Yeah.

That was my favourite because in my head I was like, well, there's Sultanas in there. That's surely like a little bit of goodness. Scoff that. Then crack on with the rest of my shift. And then by the time I got home, again, it was eat something as quick as possible, have the quickest, you know,

meal I possibly could and then get to bed. How would you recommend implementing that on a day-to-day basis, you know, from breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks to try and balance out those ups and downs. Yes, there's no kind of sexy answer to that. And I'm not a dietitian, so I'm not used to kind of giving prescriptive, this is how you do it in terms of your foods. I can give you some broad ideas.

One is the obvious, and I'm sorry to point out the obvious, is build your balanced meal. Make sure you're not just consuming carbohydrate on its own. Make sure there's fibre, healthy proteins, healthy fats. We see that makes a huge difference. How do you put that into practice? Do you like a bagel for breakfast? Fine. Can you add some nut butter to that?

Can you add some cheese to that? You know, are there other sources of protein and fat? Can you add, you know, squashed avocado and egg to that, for example? Now, some people say, oh, but hold on, I'm adding extra calories. Well, we've done studies again, and we've seen that even if you take that bagel and the next day, so one day, sorry, you have that bagel on its own. The next day with the bagel, you have a source of protein. So, for example, we've done a study where that person's had low fat Greek yogurt, which is basically a very pure source of protein. And so although you're adding calories in, that person actually went on to eat far less that day when they added the protein into their meal than when they had the bagel on its own.

Because it kept their blood sugar more balanced, it kept them more energetic. It kept their hunger levels suppressed. So adding those sources of fiber or protein of fats, if you like oats, you know, lots of people are scared of oats because, oh my God, they spike my blood sugar. Well, oats are a really healthy meal, but if you find they don't keep you full for long, because yes, you have that peak and you have that dip, I'm one of the persons, you know, that has that. Again, I add nuts and seeds to my oats and I have these premixed, so it takes no extra time. I do the same nuts and seeds to yogh, I add some nut butter. So it's just a case more of kind of, I think, what are you going to add into the meal

and not being scared that it's then giving you extra calories. In terms of your lunch and your dinner, it depends what kind of lunch and dinner you have. But again, it's about adding, I think, those heart healthy oils in protein sources. You cannot go wrong if you're having a meal that you're drizzling loads of extra virgin olive oil on. Don't worry about the calories because you will end up eating less later in the day because it's keeping you full for longer. I think that will be quite healing probably for a lot of women who have grown up with quite a lot of diet culture and restrictive mentality.

And I personally find that when focusing on adding isn't just probably better for your health, but also better mentally to think about all the foods that you can have rather than you shouldn't be having. Yeah. And absolutely, you know, when we think about snacks, for example, if you want to have that cake, just have that cake. Maybe go for a slightly smaller portion and have a handful of nuts with it. The nuts, again, you're getting lots of protein. You're getting lots of heart-healthy oils. And it's going to balance out the sugar from the cake.

But you're still getting that fix that you want for that. okay, you know, when I want chocolate, I want chocolate, and I'm going to have that chocolate. And it's just a case of, okay, well, you know, you're not necessarily offsetting it as such. But to a certain element, you kind of are by adding in something healthy that's going to balance the blood sugar, but also give you lots of other healthy nutrients as well. I think that did a really good job of giving us the basics past social media misinformation. So many of the questions were around social media, misinformation, around nutrition and trying to navigate that landscape. what would you say are the biggest nutrition trends that you see on social media and maybe which ones of them they are right to be trending it is something to worry about

and which ones of them are just a load of excuse my language bollocks so I've termed the coin neutral bollocks which basically covers nearly everything you see on social media except obviously what we put out on our Zoe podcast and my fellow colleagues you know and actually to be fair there are some good nutritionists and some good dietitians putting out good information, but the loudest voices, unfortunately, it is a lot of its neutrobolics. I think the biggest neutralobolics is, or trend at the moment is this protein trend. The other thing is seed oils, which I've talked about a lot and come under a lot of fire about. And then the trend that I think we're going to see emerging,

I hope, over the next 12 months and we're starting to see emerging, which is not neutrobolics, is fibromaxing. And so that's the one that I think would be amazing if we can get more traction on that. But this whole obsession with protein, this whole demonisation of seedle, absolute neutropolex. We've got another section which is called Real or Real,

where basically I'm going to show you a short form clip and I'd love to hear your opinions. Before I come on to it, I wanted to say about your point about seed oils. Every morning, my breakfast is I have my whole grain bread, nice, not refined carbohydrate, or sometimes I go, whole grain or a sourdough, love a sourdough, and eggs on toast. It's the quickest, easiest way that I

find it keeps me full and I fry it in olive oil, you know? And I think that's a great tip going back to, you'd ask me about how can busy people also think about balancing their blood sugar because of refined carbohydrates? Swap from the white carbohydrate to the whole grain, white bread to whole grain, red, white pasta to whole wheat pasta. It's not as nice. I do get that, but you will become accustomed to it. A good sourdough though. When my boyfriend gets into the plain, seeded. I'm like, oh God, but a good sourdough is quite nice. White rice to brown rice. Yeah. Or just add in the protein fat and

fibre. Anyway, I just wanted to add that as you were talking about your breakfast. I have my breakfast and I did like a vlog of basically like my daily routine or whatever and someone made a reaction video and it was someone who advocates for a coniferous diet made a reaction video to this. In the beginning I'm frying my eggs in my olive oil and he was like, she calls herself a doctor. She's using seed oils and yeah, it's just interesting how I feel sometimes these things can go hand in hand. What is the basics of the demonisation of seed oils?

So most of the messages that you see on social media are seed oils are toxic. Seed oils are responsible for all modern ailments from cardiovascular disease to cancer to Alzheimer's. It's all because we're consuming seed oils. The evidence doesn't support that at all. Now, I do have to caveat it with the fact that about 60% of, of the seed oils that we consume in the UK and in the US do tend to come in heavily processed foods that are not healthy for us. But it's not the seed oils themselves are unhealthy. It's the vehicle, it's the food that they're in that's unhealthy that's got all this other crap in it

that's the problem, not the seed oils themselves. And there's lots of arguments that the seedle haters, as I call them, used to demonise seed oils. One is that, you know, assar seed oil intake has increased, which it has more than 200-fold over the last 50 years, so has our rates of all of these chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, like cancers. Well, just because our intake of CETOs has increased at the same time as that, what else has changed? Our food landscape is unrecognizable from 50 years ago. We can't just put it all on seedles. It goes back to that whole thing that we talk about a lot in science, what's association versus what's causal. That's association. It's not causal at all. Then there's this idea that

because seed oils are processed, they've gone through all of these scary processes. They've been bleached. They've been deodorised. They've had like hexane chemicals and all these awful chemicals. So of course they're bad for us because anything that's processed is going to kill us. And yet butter is natural. Think of that cow grazing on that, you know, in that field, in that meadow and, you know, someone churning the milk to get the butter. So of course that's better for us. Just because something's processed doesn't mean it's bad for us. And all of the randomized control trials, which are kind of like our gold standard of research, consistently show that seed oils are better for us than butter, than lard, than beef tallow,

you know, these other forms of animal fats. And this is using seed oils that have gone through a refinement process. So this isn't using coal-pressed seedles that some people say would be better for us. And then the third main reason that people use to demonise seed oils is that they're pro-inflammatory. and that's what you hear about a lot. And it's based on the idea that the main fat in seed oils is a fat called linoleic acid, and it's a fat that fits in what we call the omega-6 family

of polyunsaturated fatty acids. And what we know is that when you look at the kind of biochemical pathways, that that linaic acid, so that fat that's in seed oil, can be converted into a different type of fat called arachidonic acid, and I'm sorry to get technical, but it's quite important because, you know, the seed or haters use all of these clever words, you know, to really kind of scare people. But it is quite simple. So this linealic acid that's found, a fat found in seedors, is converted

to this other one called arachadonic acid. And arachidonic acid under certain stimuli can release certain chemicals called a cosenoids. But basically these chemicals can act on pro-inflammatory pathways as well as lots of other pathways. However, whilst this looks beautiful on paper, whilst this may play out in a petri dish or in a mouse fed like super physiological amounts, this does not play out in humans. So very little of that linolac acid, that fat that's actually in the seed oils, is ever converted to that other type of omega-6, that arachidonic acid. And what studies consistently show is that when you feed people high amounts of this particular omega-6, linoleic acid, or particular high amounts of seed oils, you do not get an

increase in circulating inflammatory measures. It just doesn't happen. Yes, it might happen in a mouse. Yes, it might happen in a test tube, but it does not happen in humans. And that's because we have mechanisms in place such that we're not converting all of that to this other fatty acids, such that it's only when we need the inflammatory response, are we releasing those inflammatory mediators because we do need some inflammation. Monster Energy. Everybody knows white monster, Sierra Ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole zero-sugar energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole line up now. You've got strawberry dreams, blue Hawaiian, sunrise, and

Vise Guava. And they all bring the Monster Energy Punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is Zero Shubh. Tad the banner to learn more. Anti-inflammatory diets is a huge term that we've seen on social media, and I definitely want to come on to that. First, I will show you this video, and I'm very keen to hear your thoughts. Here's what I eat in a day as a carnivore in New York. After a fasted morning workout, I had a breakfast of eight scrambled eggs, cooked in the fat of a pound of 80-20 ground beef. I had a cold stick of butter on the side to keep the fats up and the hormones happy.

After walking 10,000 steps, I needed a quick snack, so I had a carnivar bar with this amazing cold brew I found. hungry again at around 10 p.m. So I cooked up some flat iron steak bites and had my favorite high fat yogurt for dessert. What did you eat today? Well, I hope they've got their cardiologist on call. And apart from the yogurt, which I am a real advocate for the health benefits of yogurt, fermented dairy, we know doesn't increase cholesterol like other dairy. You've got a great example. Cheese a great example. Cheese and yogurt don't have the same negative effects that butter does on cholesterol. And so, yeah, apart from the yogurt, oh my God, like that would be a bye-bye to her diet. And it's this, butter sticks. I mean, someone's told me about this. I haven't actually

seen it on social media myself because obviously I don't follow these kind of people. But, I mean, come on, eating butter sticks. The evidence is so, so, so, so clear that having butter increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, it increases your cholesterol levels, it increases your blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, and where's the fiber in that? You know, 95% of UK, U.S. people are deficient in fiber. I mean, I don't know where she's getting any fiber in that. A.X. Now, whilst we know that dietary cholesterol and eggs is a high source of dietary cholesterol,

we know that dietary cholesterol doesn't increase cholesterol in the way that saturated fat does. Having more than two eggs a day, no, I wouldn't recommend that. Brilliant, okay. There's a lot of cholesterol as well as a lot of saturated fat as well as a lot of red meat. I imagine there's loads of salt in there. It was biting into the butter that really physically made me cringe. Oh my gosh, I know. That was awful.

I'd love to hear your opinion on something that I heard hypothesized, and I am not a nutrition expert. I want to caveat all of this by saying that. But I'd just love to hear your opinion. Say if there's these extremes where someone goes, say, maybe vegan or they maybe go to a carnivore diet. In both of those diets, you eat unprocessed foods. and what this individual was hypothesizing on something I was listening to

was that the benefits come from potentially maybe removing the unprocessed foods or the physical symptoms that people may feel when they see benefits from going on a carnivore diet. What are your opinions on that? So I think there's two points there. One is the placebo effect. So the perceived benefit that you've said that people see from changing their diet, absolutely. We know there's a placebo effect that people.

People think, oh, well, I've seen this social media person say they feel great and that. I'm going to try it. Obviously, I'm going to feel great. And our brain is incredibly powerful and so they might feel great. Then there is that whole big area of, okay, is it that actually they're just cutting out processed foods? But are they? You know, a lot of vegan diets tend to be, and vegetarian diets tend to actually be higher in processed foods. And, you know, it's really variable.

a vegan and vegetarian diet is, you know, night and day one to another. So there are some incredibly healthy vegan and vegetarian diets. But you can have a really shitty vegan diet that's full of all of these meat substitutes, milk substitutes. You know, some of the meat substitutes out there are so packed in salt, so packed in other additives and emulsifiers and all sorts of crap that you might as well be eating like, I don't know, you know, piece of cardboard or something or plastic. Now there are other some meat and animal substitutes that are healthy for us.

I don't know specific brands. But I mean, that again is a whole big area where you've got a big diversity. And so I don't know the answer to what you've asking because it depends. And it's always that it depends on what kind of vegan diet that person's following or what kind of carnivore diet that person's following. But what I would say is if that person's following a carnival diet, even if none of the foods have been processed as such, you see. still got a diet that could be very deficient in fiber, very deficient in plant-based

bioactives. So plants have a really important role, not just in giving us fiber, which I think is one of the most important nutrients that we are nearly all deficient in. Plants have an amazing amount of chemicals. We know on average a food has over 50,000 chemicals. Many of those chemicals have magical properties almost. I mean, actually, I'm very cautious saying the word magical related to nutrition, but many plants have what I call bioactive. So these are chemicals like polyphenols. Polyphenols are chemicals that give plants their pigmentic color. So blueberries are really high in polyphenols. Polyphenols, you know, are amazing. They act on anti-inflammatory pathways. They act on oxidative pathways in a beneficial way. And so people following that kind of carnivore

diet, they're not going to get any of that. So fine, they might be happy because they say, well, I'm not having additives, I'm not having amulsifiers. But what else are they not having all of the good stuff as well? I mentioned the rise in anti-inflammatory diets. What are your thoughts on anti-inflammatory diets? So because it's a diet type, I think I would be kind of cautious to say, oh yeah, we should all be going on anti-inflammatory diet. I think we should all just eat balanced healthy meals, have a little bit of a treat every now and then, you know, have minimally processed foods, have plant-based foods, have a diversity of foods, you know, have healthy oils, healthy protein sources, etc. It's boring.

No one wants to hear that. Now, I could package that as a, oh, do you want a heart health diet? Do you want an anti-inflammatory diet? And what underpins an anti-inflammatory diet is exactly what underpins a general, healthy, balanced diet, is what underpins the Mediterranean diet. Now, Mediterranean diet's a huge term because you've got all different types of diets within the Mediterranean. But what we classically think of is a Mediterranean diet. rich in fruits and vegetables, rich in very dark, pigmented vegetables.

So they've got, again, a lot of these polyphenols, rich in oily fish, which we know act on inflammatory pathways in a favourable way, low in processed foods, low in red meat and so forth. And so I would say that, yes, there is a lot of evidence to show that low grade chronic inflammation is a problem today because of our lifestyles, because of the foods that we eat, because of, whether it's stress, whether it's the food, whether it's being sedentary, whether it's environmental toxins, etc. Yes, we know that low-grade inflammation is a problem and it underpins many chronic diseases from heart disease to cancers. So any dietary changes that we can make that minimise diet-induced inflammation absolutely will improve our overall health.

But again, there's no silver bullet and I don't think there's a magic anti-inflammatory diet that really differs from what I believe is just healthy eating principles. Brilliant. I'm going to come on to some community questions. We had so many. I feel like navigating, you know, as you've said, the nutrition landscape of today can be clearly really, really difficult for a lot of people. One of the community questions we've been asked is,

does the order in which you eat macros during a meal matter? This is a hard one because what does matter mean? Like, yes, I think it matters to your pleasure. Like, when I want to eat my meal, when I'm having. at home or in a restaurant, I want to eat it in a way that brings me pleasure. So absolutely it matters. And so what matters to me is being able to just eat what I want, how I want at the time I want from that plate. Does it matter in terms of what I think really they're asking in terms of how we metabolise it and our health response? Yes, it does have an effect. And again, this is something

that you see many of those glucose influences talk about, you know, before you have your carbs, have your fat, have your protein, have your fibre. Why? Because it will slow down the rate at which your stomach empties, so it slows down the rate of gastric emptying. So it will slow down the rate that the carbohydrates appearing in your blood or the sugar is appearing in your blood. And so you'll get less of a big peak. You're less likely to get a dip. But the size effect, in my opinion, is quite small. And so, for example, studies have looked at protein with a meal versus protein as a preload. And by preload, I mean having a protein source

about 30 minutes before you have the carbohydrate in the meal. And yes, you might have a slightly greater suppression of the glucose response, having it as a preload, than having it in a meal. All those studies are quite mixed on this. But actually, when you look at the actual data, the size effect is quite small. And this is something that I don't think we think about

enough sometimes as scientists, but also as individuals reading stuff that, you know, is on social media, is we can say something has a significant effect. And that's a statistical test. You know, is it significantly different by a statistical test? Is it significant from a health point of view is an entirely different thing? And so my view is that the order in which you have your nutrients or your food within a meal, yes, can impact how you metabolize it.

but I would say the size effect is very small and in my opinion it's just not worth it I mean are you going to sit with what's your favourite meal for example if you were to go to a restaurant do you know I love like mussels and just crusty bread that's probably one of my favourite meals so if you were in a restaurant and you had a beautiful bowl of muscles in some lovely sauce or something yeah

oh okay this is now giving me a craving and then you had your crusty bread Yeah. Do you want to go in, and then let's say you've got another butter as well. Are you going to eat that butter, then eat your muscles, and then wait and then eat your bread on its own 10 minutes later? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It ruins the pleasure. You want to dip that bread in the muscle sauce. You want to have a bit of muscles, a bit of bread with the butter.

And food is there to be enjoyed. And I think this is the problem with what I call biohacking and some of these kind of hallowing. and some of these kind of hacks that yes, there's science to show that the order and the time of day and this and that matters but actually how important is it relative to the pleasure that you're getting? Reminds me of like, you know,

majoring in the miners or putting sun loungers out on the Titanic. You know, like the idea of you're focusing in on this quite small thing, you know, what's the point in focusing on what order you have your macros if, I don't know, you're not eating your, you're not eating enough fruit and veg during the day. It pales into insignificance. You're absolutely right. If you're not eating your plant-based foods, your fruits, your vegetables, your beans, your pulses, your nuts, your seeds.

It's like, it's like 1% compared to 100%. Yeah. Why bother? Yeah. Do you know, if it makes you feel good and you feel more positive about yourself, I'm all for it. But I think it would be a pretty damn miserable meal. Yeah, that would ruin my muscles. Absolutely ruin my muscles.

Another question that we got about glucose spikes was, does eating vegetables and vegetables? first, again with the order, reduce glucose spikes? As far as I'm aware, yes. I don't think there's been many studies looking specifically just at vegetables. I do know I looked into this some time ago and I think there was one study that was out there that had vegetables before. Absolutely fibre does. So we know fibre, protein, fat.

Absolutely. There's clinical trials showing if you have that before or you have it with a meal. Yes, it does reduce your glucose spike. Fruits and vegetables are also quite high. it, well, particularly fruits in sugars, can be broken down in parts of glucose. So that's going to somewhat contribute to your glucose spike, but in a healthy way. So please do not avoid fruit because you're worried about your glucose spike. Again, I'd say it's a small effect.

Yes, it happens. Easy ways to increase fibre intake. One very simple way is to take a fibre supplement. Ideally, we would get it from our diet. Absolutely. Food first. Absolutely. The reality is, is that it's a fibre supplement. it's quite hard. It's quite hard to get what we should be getting,

which is 30 grams, if you're not used to cooking the kind of foods that are rich in fibre, whether it's fruits, whether it's vegetables, whether it's beans, pulses, lentils, that sort of thing. So whilst as a nutritionist, nutrition scientists, we should always take a food first approach. Let's be pragmatic as well. You know, if taking a fibre supplement,

and there's loads of good fibre supplements out there that have a diversity fibre, if that is your only way of getting fibre, it's better to do that than not at all. However, it is far better to get it from foods. The reason it's better to get it from foods and a diversity of foods is because fibre is not just one single thing entity.

There's lots of different types of fibres. There's soluble, there's insoluble. And even within those, there's lots of different fibre types. These different fibre types impact our body in different ways. They feed different bugs in our gut. some fibres increase certain bugs in our gut, some other fibres increase other bugs in our gut.

So we want a diversity fibre. So having a food first approach where you're getting a diversity fibre is going to be the best way, therefore, to get that diversity, you know, that will improve your health. The obvious things are like nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds are packed full of fibre, pulses, chickpeas, beans, lentils.

You know, these are all great sources. fruits and vegetables. How do you incorporate them into your everyday diet? Swap your typical snacks with nuts or seeds is one great way. Sneak in beans or lentils, you know, impulses if you can. My kids will not touch beans, lentil pulses. There's no way. Occasionally I'll sneak it in. So if I'm doing a spaghetti bolognese, for example, you can actually get some lentils, mush them all up and sneak it in that way. You know, because again, we've got to be practical, you know, depending on who your listeners are, if like me, what I eat in the evening isn't what I would choose to eat. It's what my bloody fussy kids will eat. They say they're not fussy, but I tell you, when it

comes to saying, okay, do you want this, this or this? It's like, no, I don't like any of that. And so it's really challenging if you've got kids as well to get many of these different sources. So it's a case of finding what works for you. Again, there's the obvious, which is swapping from white grain to whole grain, so white rice, white pasta, white bread to whole grain. Lots of people may not like the taste. Swapping from white bread to nut, you know, the kind of nutty, seedy, whole grain. Rye bread is packed. Adding to your yoghuts and chia seeds, etc. All of these are really simple hacks that you can do. I'm probably not the best person to advise on this because being more the scientist than the kind of dietitian, but there are some fantastic people you can follow

on social media that have loads of ways that you can increase. Dr. Emily Leaming, who is an incredible dietitian who I've worked with for many years. She's actually got a new book coming out all about fibre, specifically about how you can cook your favourite recipes and fibre maxim. So I tried out recently a recipe that she did, which was one that my kids would have eaten, which was, oh my gosh, macaroni cheese. Nice.

And she did a fibre boost version. Wow. So whilst I'm always cautious pitching for books, I think it's so relevant to your question. She's got book out, but you can follow her anyway on. Instagram, Dr. Emily Leaming, packed full of recipe ideas for how to max out that fibre, really simple ways. We'll have to put that in the description for the listeners. One last community question before we ask you the question that we've been asking all our guests. What are

your opinions on apple side of vinegar for glucose spikes? So the randomised control trials showed that if you have apple cider vinegar before having carbohydrates, on average, it does reduce your glucose spike. It does reduce your peak in circulating glucose. It varies massively from individual to individual. It varies depending on the dose. Is it a big enough effect to actually have a meaningful health effect? Probably not. I'd be more interested if it prevented that dip because I think it's that dip that in circulating glucose we should be more worried about with the food that we're eating rather than the peak. If you like it, and And you can afford it, and it doesn't impact how you're eating the food fine.

But the majority of people I know who've tried it say it's disgusting. Say that it then means that shit they have to weigh. I don't know what the protocol is, but you do need to wait. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail. Woo! And the super athlete is stuff. Like fishing gear for chilling by the creek.

Nice cast. Fitness apparel to push for high. Reps, you got this. And golf balls priced so you can afford to lose one. Or a few. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. Like, I think, 10, 15 minutes before you go to have your carbohydrate.

And then they're sitting and they've only just remembered and then their meals getting cold. No, I wouldn't bother. So I'm afraid my answer to nearly all your questions is, yes, the science shows this. B, does it ruin the pleasure and is the size effect big enough? And I think you have to balance those up. Oh, 100% because I think we're all busy individuals, you know. Who has got the time to be saying,

oh God, I need to remember to take my apple side of vinegar shot, you know, and cook a nutritious balanced meal and stay sane and, you know, keep every other plate spinning. There's ways that you can have the same effect but have added benefits. Add in that extra virgin olive oil, you're going to get all of those polyphenols, you're going to get all those heart-healthy oils,

and you're going to blunt your blood sugar peak. I'm going to have to replay this episode to my boyfriend because my boyfriend is gym-orientated, and I think the gym-orientated, it can fall into the calories in versus calories-out mindset. So sometimes I love my favourite easy meal is beans, olive oil, just like seasoning, and then in a whole week pitter,

and when I've had the busiest day, I know that will take me 15 minutes, and it will stop me from ordering a delivery. That's like what I have when I'm just like, I cannot be asked. And he saw how much olive oil I put in with my beans. And he was like, what are you doing? So I'm going to have to replay this episode for him.

It's been an absolute pleasure. The final question that we've been asking all our guests is Professor Sarah Berry. What do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? Well, as a 49-year-old woman, what I wish I knew when I was 25 years of age, is that nobody really gives a shit about you, what you're doing, how you answered that question, how you walked into that room. And I wish, for me, and I hope my now 16 year old daughter at the age of 25, will not worry about what other people think. Everyone else is too busy living their lives. So it's not nutrition, but I think

my most confident years and my happiest years in myself have been in my 40s, because I don't give a shit if someone thinks I said something stupid or my hair was extra frizzy that day or, you know, I was inappropriate with that comment or whatever. Don't care. I think that's an absolutely brilliant piece of advice to end on. So thank you so, so, so, so much for coming on the podcast. And I know the listeners will also be very, very grateful as well. Pleasure. This was such an easy podcast. I could carry on talking for ages. It just felt like we're having a nice conversation in the pub. Except my glass of wine's not here. No.